The government is accused of complicity in torture

“UN-CANADIAN, counterproductive and probably illegal.” That is how Richard Colvin, a diplomat who served in Afghanistan, describes the Canadian armed forces' practice in 2006 and early 2007 of handing detainees over to Afghan authorities, who are known to use torture, without monitoring their welfare. Speaking to a parliamentary committee on November 18th Mr Colvin said that all the detainees whom Canadian troops had handed over in this period were probably tortured, and implied that the government knew this and tried to cover it up.

Since then the Conservative government has done its best to look as if it has something to hide. First it tried to prevent Mr Colvin from testifying and then it disparaged him, suggesting he had been duped by the Taliban. In May 2007 the procedures for handling prisoners were changed. Canadian military officers now check that those handed over (who often include innocent Afghans detained in error) are not being mistreated and temporarily halt further transfers until any complaints are dealt with satisfactorily. Instead of trying to silence or shoot the messenger, the government could have stressed that the old, flawed handover procedures have been reformed—and blamed them on the previous, Liberal administration, under which they were set up.

Instead, the three opposition parties have accused the government of victimising a serving diplomat to conceal damaging information. Mr Colvin's evidence certainly points to that. He says he began warning senior government and military officials in May 2006 about the high probability that, once prisoners had been handed over, they would be tortured. The three senior generals at the time say they were not told of this risk until April 2007.

Unlike Britain and the Netherlands, its NATO allies in southern Afghanistan, Canada did not then have a provision in its detainee agreement to let it monitor those it transferred. It relied on the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which had no access to the prisons in Kandahar, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which did but was not allowed to pass information to anyone but the Afghans. His reports, he says, were ignored and he was later told to stop putting sensitive information in writing.

The 2007 change in procedures came after Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association demanded both a judicial review and an investigation by the Military Police Complaints Commission, an independent, quasi-judicial agency. That investigation has been stymied by the government's refusal to hand over documents and its warnings to potential government witnesses, including Mr Colvin, that they could face jail sentences if they testify.

The row, and the suspicions of a cover-up, will further erode Canadians' fading support for the Afghanistan war. The continuing parliamentary investigation will also weaken the hand of Stephen Harper, the prime minister, who leaves on December 1st for his first official visit to China. His government has lectured the Chinese on human rights. That will be harder now Canada is accused by one of its own officials of being complicit in torture.